


Blanket Turtle

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Blanket Verse [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Kid Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Loki is afraid of thunder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blanket Turtle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zero, who wanted Tony dealing with kid!Loki.

Baby Loki –or rather, de-aged-and-temporarily-five-years-old Loki- is afraid of thunder.

Which, quite frankly, would be absolutely laughable if tony weren’t stuck alone with him at the Avengers headquarters because, guess what, Earth’s mightiest heroes are actually a bunch of heartless traitor.  
Granted, they left Loki an adult with, as far as they knew, no intention to turn himself into a toddler but they still left him _alone_ with _Tony_ which means it’s entirely their fault that the two men were snapping at each other barely a minute after they left (never mind the fact that they’re both supposedly adults, because Loki has been cranky since they captured him and put him in magic-suppressing handcuffs, and Tony never mastered the art of keeping his mouth shut in the first place.  
No, not even to prevent himself from swearing like a sailor when he found a baby-fat version of Loki sitting on the couch next to an empty bottle and a piece of paper that only read _Count yourself lucky I included a translation spell._ )

 

But back to the point.

The point is that little Loki is afraid of thunder, and he’s in the workshop and crying, and there’s no one there other than Tony who, you’ll have to admit, is hardly the first person you would think of as a babysitter –except maybe if you were starting a list of who _not_ to recruit.

And now there’s snot on Tony’s best wife-beater (what? There’s nothing for kids in the house, and that’s the only thing he could think to use as a nightshirt that would still leave Loki some room to use his hands) and a crying kid in his workshop and it’s four am and he hasn’t had coffee in hours and—

 

“J.A.R.V.I.S? A Little help there?”

“I am afraid I haven’t been programmed to offer babysitting advice, sir,” is the answer Tony gets, and he grumbles.

 

How is he supposed to do anything anyway? Pepper always forbids him to go near kids –apparently hitting on single moms while signing autographs doesn’t reflect well on you, especially if it appears later that said moms aren’t all single- and even if when he was allowed near them, all he had to do was pat their head and smile, and that would be it!

 

Dum-E is waving a handkerchief in the boy’s face, which has no effect for the first few seconds, until Loki actually looks at the robot and yells, even more scared than before –how does he even still have a voice, Tony has no idea- before he runs to hide under one of the workspaces scattered around the room, curling in a ball in the darkest corner he can find.

Great.

 

Okay, think, Tony. What can you do to make that better?

He can’t call Pepper –she made him promise to leave her alone during her honeymoon with Steve, under pain of death- and he can’t call Clint or Natasha because they’re away on mission, and Bruce is away in Tibet, and Thor isn’t due to return from Asgard for the next four weeks.  
Of course, there’s always Fury, but Tony has no intention to bring him into the mess if he can avoid it, thank you very much.  
But seriously, how is he even supposed to do anything it’s not like he can control thunder or anything, and Loki doesn’t remember anything of technology or—

If ideas actually made light bulbs appear above people’s head, this one would shine like a beacon because it is exactly the point: Loki _doesn’t_ remember, which mean that he doesn’t know _what_ the light in Tony’s chest does exactly and –okay, stop. No jumping in glee, Tony.

 

“Hey!” He says as he crouches and twists on himself to try and get under the table too, “Why are you hiding?”

 

Loki keeps crying, and for a second Tony’s newfound assurance wavers –what if it’s just him? What if he’s doing things wrong? What he fucks it up and ends up traumatizing Loki even more than he already was? I mean he’s a super villain anyway but right now he’s still a kid and Tony doesn’t actually want to damage a kid!

 

“Mommy,” Loki cries softly, “mo—ommy!”

“Hey,” Tony tries again, battling against the knot in his throat –boy, doesn’t he remember a thousand of these occasion when he cried for his parents and nobody came to take him in their arms— “hey, don’t cry. I’m here.”

“I want mommy,” Loki protests, hugging himself, and Tony sighs.

“I know. I want my mommy too, you know.” After all, it’s not like saying that to a five-years-old is going to have any real consequences.

 

Except it does have one, very positive effect, which is that Loki stops crying and looks at him over the barrier of knees that are still fat with young age but promise to be bony in a few years, when the kid grows up.

 

“You’re a grown up,” the boy states, like it negates Tony’s right to want his mother, and Tony gives him a smile.

“I know. I should know better, shouldn’t I? But I don’t really like thunder. It makes me a little bit afraid.”

“Really?”

 

Tony nods, and the movement makes the light of his arc reactor flash against the table (which, by the way, feels a lot lower when you’re trying to fit underneath than when you’re working on it) which in turn causes Loki to look at him with eyes like saucers:

 

“What’s that?” he asks, a curious finger coming to hover near the lamp and Tony, remembering his earlier idea, makes sure to puff his chest:

“It’s my magic light,” he says and, as he hoped, little Loki doesn’t even think of denying the possibility.

“What does it do?” The kid asks, and for the first time in a long time, Tony is really, really glad that he’s been bullshitting his way around for a long time, because that may be the key to survival right there.

“It keeps thunder away,” he says, and then when Loki _looks_ at him, all runny nose and red eyes and _why would you make fun of me,_ he adds in a panic “it’s true, I swear! I swear on… on—on my teddy bear!”

 

Oh, the sensation of a question mark shaping in a kid’s eyes, heavy and so full of trust that an adult will bring the answer. Tony used to have it, too, a long time ago, and seeing it in Loki, stripped of all the manic grins and eye-twitches and exploding building, well. It’s a punch at Tony’s heart, really, so maybe it’s not so surprising that he says:

 

“Do you want to see it?” Loki nods and Tony moves to the workshop, but soon chubby fingers are clutching at his T-shirt, and Loki’s eyes look full of tears again. “I’ll be back in a minute!” Tony promises, desperate not to open the dam again now that it’s closed. “And I’m not leaving you alone. See? U’s going to stay with you. He’s a bit weird, but he’s nice. And he’s mine, he’s not going to let anything hurt you, I promise. Okay?”

 

Little Loki nods reluctantly, and gives a side-eye to U while Tony crawls out from under the workbench and makes his backbone pop into place. Truth be told –and that means nobody will _ever_ hear about it- he knows exactly where the bear is. It’s an old stuffed toy he’s had for as long as he can remember, and he’s always kept it preciously, never losing track of it.

It doesn’t even take a minute for him to find Clutch and slap the dust off him.  
It’s an old thing, grey with patches of red on its face and paws, and several ‘stitches’ all over the body and in the back. Tony takes time to put new batteries in it and goes back to the workbench, where little Loki is cautiously poking at U’s mechanic fingers –said fingers are somehow wrapped into a dishtowel and Tony most definitely does _not_ want to know.

 

“There,” he grunts, holding Clutch out to Loki while he slides back under the workbench, neck bent as far as he can make it go to fit next to the kid. “His name’s Clutch. Go on, touch his nose.”

 

Loki obeys, pressing a finger that’s sticky with mucus on the bear’s nose, and jumps when the tiny grey arms close on thin air.

 

“I love you,” Clutch says in that old mechanic voice of his. “Let’s play a game.”

 

Oh, the memories attached to that voice.

Tony remembers holding Clutch in front of his father and pressing his nose, hoping that the words would have more effect in a robots voice than they had when he spoke them. He remembers Maria saying ‘not now, sweetie’ and Howard saying ‘I’m busy, son’ and then later ‘Tony, you’re too old to play with teddy bears’ and ‘get rid of that, it’s broken and useless’ and he remembers curling up under the cover and apologizing for half of the night before hiding Clutch under the wobbly plank next to his bed.

There’s something soft against his cheek, and a small electronic voice says:

 

“I love you. Let’s play a game.”

 

Clutch’s tiny arms close around Tony’s face, and he chuckles, but it comes out sounding half like a sob, and Loki tugs on his shirt.

 

“I’m sorry you’re sad,” he says.

 

He looks ridiculous, honestly, in the black wife-beater that’s big enough to be a dress on him, cheeks dirty with tears and dust and a bit of snot, too. Yet, the way he looks at Tony, with those big eyes full of concern, that doesn’t look ridiculous at all.

So when two pale arms sneak around his shoulders, Tony just brings the kid closer to him, an arm around his thigh, and he holds him like that for a long, long time, until Loki’s breathing evens out, being under the workbench stops to matter, and Tony adjusts his position so he can stretch his legs and let the kid rest against his chest.

 

**{In a hotel in Rome}**

 

“J.A.R.V.I.S?” Pepper asks, more urgent than she usually is –after all, they _did_ leave Tony alone with Loki. Granted, the latter behaved and is theoretically depowered but still –what if he makes a potion? What is he breaks the manacles or _something_? “J.A.R.V.I.S, you asked for help.”

“Yes I did, miss Potts,” J.A.R.V.I.S answers, “but I think it won’t be necessary, after all. Dum-E has the situation covered.”

“Dummy? _Dummy_?”

 

Pepper asks, and Steve drapes an arm around her shoulders with a worried frown, just before the communication cuts off, and she groans in frustration.

 

“We have to go back,” she says. “We can’t leave tony alone there, I mean, _Dummy_? Dummy can’t handle a crisis, he’s not—he won’t….”

 

She sees Steve look at her with a fond look, because –and that she realizes too late- she’s called Dummy by its name when she pretends not to know it, but before she can protest, her phone beeps to signal a new message. She nearly explodes when she sees it’s from J.A.R.V.I.S, and she wishes she could throw the phone into the wall when the video takes too long to load.

 

Still, after a while, the tiny screen shifts from black to a view of what she recognizes as the workshop, and more precisely the workspace on the right of the door, where she spots Tony.

He’s lying on his side, one arm extended to pillow a toddler’s head while the other curls around said boy and what appears to be a stuffed bear. One of the armbots –Pepper assumes it’s Dummy- is hovering next to them with an old brown blanket, which he dumps on the two sleeping forms, burying them under what looks like heavy wool.

Tony brings his legs closer to his chest and wiggles for a while, and the video ends on him and baby Loki –no way that hair belongs to anyone else- curled up in a blanket turtle.

 

“Do we need to go back?” Steve asks next to her, and Pepper smiles.

“You know,” she says, feeling weirdly emotional, “I think they’re okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Can't/won't comment on AO3? Please, leave your feedback [here](fanfanwrites.tumblr.com)! <3


End file.
